The G1's button and control layout is pretty typical for a camera in its class. Get used to that low-battery icon, though. The G1 has the worst battery life we've seen in years--while I was field testing, it used a third of the power after only 46 shots.

Occasionally, the G1 delivered a decent snapshot, like this one (though it looks far better scaled down here). However, had the butterflies not been posing that day, the G1's sluggishness would have made this shot impossible.

The G1 exhibits little noise degradation between ISO 80 and ISO 100 because ISO 80 is so bad. With a decent 7-megapixel camera, you should be able to clearly read at least some of the units on the tape measure as well as the text in the book. Because of the aggressive blurring, the G1 measures well for noise, but you can see the tradeoff.

The G1's outdoor shots generally display severely blown-out highlights, like the inset with glow-in-the-dark mom, and a sky full o' purple fringing on high-contrast edges. It's a shame, because the rest of the scene looks properly exposed.